I’ll start with a place, a Paris apartment in Montparnasse, and a date, 23 December 1936, and a gift from one writer to another of his corduroy jacket which, from the point of view of the recipient, may have had a few traces of whale blubber attached to its lapels. The generous donor was the American writer Henry Miller. He thought his visitor, George Orwell, on his way to Spain to fight in the civil war, would benefit from its warmth through the Spanish winter, though he pointed out that it was not bulletproof. The present, Miller said, was his contribution to the loyalist anti-fascist cause.
The encounter between the two men (the American was almost 45, the Englishman 33) had been well smoothed in advance by Orwell’s positive review of Miller’s novel, Tropic of Cancer, which was followed by a collegiate exchange of letters. The meeting presents us with a tableau vivant and source for the heart of Orwell’s celebrated essay “Inside the Whale”, published in book form just over three years later in 1940 by Gollancz. Despite a fair degree of mutual admiration, these two writers had much to disagree about. Henry Miller, self-exiled, strenuously bohemian, a cultural pessimist, hedonist, tirelessly sexually active – or tiresomely, as second wave feminists would point out through the Seventies. He had a profound disregard for politics and political activism of any kind. As a writer, he was, by Orwell’s definition, “inside the whale”. Such political views as Miller had were naive and self-regarding and light-hearted. In a letter to Lawrence Durrell he wrote that he knew he could head off the rise of Nazism and the threat of war if he could just get five minutes alone with Adolf Hitler and make him laugh.
Hazzard distinguishes her perspective on office life by giving particular attention to the initial hopes of her characters—to make a difference in the world, to have a fulfilling career. Their optimism never lasts for long, but unlike in many contemporary workplace novels, Hazzard’s protagonists are not already completely inured to their situations when readers first encounter them. Instead, we follow along as their depressing professional experiences nudge them toward self-understanding and hard-won realism, which often does more to entrench them within the Organization than to excise them from it. Observing these transformations is akin to reading a bleak, adults-only version of a bildungsroman; the distinctly rendered moral educations of Hazzard’s characters affect us all the more because of our cultural familiarity with the mundane inner workings of office ecosystems. Even so, Hazzard’s writing remains dynamic, and full of detailed intimacy; rather than relying on ambient absurdity for humor, she employs precise, merciless descriptions—of inert, strangely sympathetic bosses; of colleagues who wield pettiness as the weapon of egotism; of love affairs and friendships compressed by the pressures of bureaucratic life.
Maier’s story may be singular, but it follows a familiar arc: the overlooked or misunderstood genius whose true gifts earn acclaim only after death. She now joins the ranks of some of our most beloved artists—Emily Dickinson, Peter Hujar, Franz Kafka, John Keats, Amadeo Modigliani, John Kennedy Toole, Jonathan Larson—whose fame has been enhanced by having lived fameless lives. In the world of art, we appreciate quality, but we are suckers for stories of runaway posthumous success. They are the ultimate underdog tales, at once tragic and triumphant.
The first time I was painted by Hannah Meehan, she spent some time arranging me into a pose that would work for her.
First, she told me to relax, to find a position that was comfortable, because we’d be going for a few hours.
I sat in the yellow armchair in the middle of the small studio in the attic of her house. I crossed and uncrossed my legs – first at the knee, then at the ankle. I folded my hands in my lap while she watched me.
So when my future husband rang my doorbell a month later (we had been set up to meet casually by friends who I guarantee did not see what was coming), I answered with a belief that I would be fine no matter the result but also, for reasons I didn’t yet understand, a pounding heart. I had only seen a few Instagram photos of Luis, and my first impression was that he looked like a vampire Lord Byron. About 20 minutes into our date he told me he didn’t drink, and I asked why. “Do you really want to get this intense?” he asked. “Always,” I responded.
Assuming the role of a peripatetic tour guide, Henry Gee in “A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth” takes the reader on an exuberant romp through evolution, like a modern-day Willy Wonka of genetic space. Gee’s grand tour enthusiastically details the narrative underlying life’s erratic and often whimsical exploration of biological form and function. En route we encounter some of the oddities and peculiarities that this process — guided by a blend of chance and evolutionary election — has thrown up.
‘Looking for the Good War” is a remarkable book, from its title and subtitle to its last words some 350 pages later. It is a stirring indictment of American sentimentality about war, written by an English professor who teaches Homer, Shakespeare and Styron to future officers of the U.S. Army. Elizabeth Samet is a professor of English at West Point. Her classroom high above the Hudson River must be a lively spot.